The Bride Means Business

“Just a minute, Christine.” His voice was a deep growl, and she could still feel the hard strength of his desire pressing into her. Tremors began to shudder through her.

But the childish voice came again. “Who is that, Daddy?”

Dax sighed and released her. Jillian straightened her clothing with trembling hands. Slowly, she forced herself to turn around.

Dax stepped aside, and if she’d been shocked before, every thought fled now. Shock dribbled ice down her neck, sending goose bumps up her arms, leaving a cold ball of lead in the pit of her stomach. The world swam and she instinctively put out a hand, then snatched it away again when it landed on his forearm.

Distantly, she saw him turn, heard him say, “Christine, this is my friend Jillian.”

The child was fair, the straight, shaggy strands as blond as Jillian’s own. There was no mistaking her parentage, though. Dax’s dark eyes under identical brows, drawn now into a suspicious scowl, studied her resentfully. She had his lean frame as well, though on his child it was going to translate into a killer pair of legs one of these days.

How could it hurt so much? She’d put Dax behind her, buried all her imaginings of a family of her own with the remnants of her love for a man who hadn’t trusted her enough to believe in her. Now she realized that in holding herself aloof from the possibilities of another love, she’d been punishing herself, not Dax, all these years. She was the one who’d been alone for the past seven years, while Dax clearly hadn’t spent his life in misery over her.

Her breast heaved; a sob burst out without warning and she only kept another from erupting by clamping one hand over her mouth. Abruptly turning from his daughter, Dax reached for her.

But she reared back as if he were a poisonous snake, continuing to inch her way backward until the cold marble of the low railing around the patio kept her from going farther. He stopped and raised his hands as if to reassure her that he wasn’t coming any closer, and she stared at him, futilely battling an agony as deep as she’d known the day he’d stared at her with hot rage and hatred burning in his eyes before he’d walked away forever.

She bowed her head and closed her eyes, taking the deep breaths that had gotten her through Charles’s and Alma’s funeral and a thousand other moments of despondency over the years.

A self-protective wall slammed down. Blessed numbness descended, and she was grateful. Emotion, feeling, was gone. Nothing could hurt her now. Later, maybe, she’d think of this, but right now all she prayed for was the fortitude to deflect this shattering blow that threatened to break her into a thousand shards of desolation.

Summoning what she hoped looked remotely like a smile, she walked toward the little girl. As she extended her hand like an automaton, she gave Dax a wide berth. “I’m Jillian Kerr.”

The child stared at the hand as if she wasn’t sure what to do with it. Finally, she put out her own and dutifully shook Jillian’s hand. “I’m Christine.”

It was slightly sullen, but Jillian barely registered the tone. “I knew your father when we were kids, even younger than you are. And despite what you just saw, we aren’t really friends at all. We had some business to discuss and I’m going now.”

Slipping past the child—Christine—she made her way out of the dining room with its three place settings and walked directly to the hall table. She picked up the phone and called a cab, telling them she’d pay double fare for immediate pickup.

As she opened the heavy front door, she heard Dax call her name. She closed the door gently and kept going. She was almost at the end of the circular driveway when he caught up to her. Walking beside her, he said, “Jillian?”

She didn’t respond. She couldn’t. Tears beat at the backs of her eyes; every ounce of her willpower was directed at holding them back. Silently, she concentrated on the meaningless task of counting her measured steps. As she turned left, she started down the street in the direction she knew the cab would be coming.

“Jillian, we have to talk.”

She walked on, putting a hand to her mouth when her breath hitched and another sob threatened.

“You can’t walk home, honey. Let me drive you home.” His voice was surprisingly gentle, but she supposed he could afford to be gentle now.

The cab turned the corner at the bottom of the hill. She stopped to wait for it.

Dax stopped, too, stepping in front of her. “I meant to tell you about Christine. I wanted you to meet her this evening but not—”

“And I’ve met her.” Her eyes focused on him, and she reached for the imaginary wall she envisioned between them. “If you came back here to punish me, Dax, consider the job done.” Even she could hear the distress she couldn’t quite control in her shaking voice. “If I had one wish, I’d wish that you were the Piersall who’d been in that car last week.”

His features went from concern to stone-solid stoicism. The cab slowed to a stop at her hail and she opened the door and slid into the back seat while he watched with clenched fists. As she lay her head against the seat back, she gave the driver her address and concentrated anew on forcing back the tears.

Three

Dax sat on the edge of the pool, staring down into the water without really seeing it. It was long past nightfall and his butt was getting tired of the concrete, and still he sat. Trying to make some sense of his life.

He was still shaken by Jillian’s reaction to his daughter earlier in the evening. And as the water rippled and beckoned around his calves, he wondered how everything could have gone so wrong. They’d been happy once.

From the first time he’d kissed her to the day he’d caught her in bed with his own brother, they’d been happy. At least, he thought they had been. And damn her eyes, he’d never met another woman who could take her place. Not in his heart, because he wasn’t stupid—one lesson had been enough. But even someone he could enjoy enough to share his life with. It wasn’t as if he’d had a choice with Libby. They’d married to give Christine legitimacy, but they’d hardly enjoyed their life together.

But in all honesty, he couldn’t blame his ex-wife. She’d never had a chance against his memories. He sighed, a bitter sound on the mild night air. It would be nice, really nice, if just once, when he was in bed with a woman, he didn’t wish it were Jillian beneath him, around him. He might have been able to block her out of his waking thoughts, but she’d haunted his dreams for years.

Memories of her laughing eyes, the flash of her teasing smile, taunted his aching mind. He’d thought of her as a little sister, albeit a rather annoying one, when he was a kid. Marina had been closer to his age and they’d hung out together a lot until high school, when they’d begun to date different people. He’d always marveled at the differences between the two girls. Physically, they could have been twins if they were the same size. Marina was several inches taller than Jillian, but they’d both had that face that stopped boys in their tracks and the long, slim body that knocked them to their knees.